Based upon an outstanding book by Cornelius Ryan, this movie tells the story of Field Marshall Montgomery's ambitious but very risky plan to invade Germany in the fall of 1944, by dropping airborne troops to take strategic bridges, and sending an armored column to link up with the airborne troops. The plan required too much to go perfectly, it didn't, and the plan failed. The movie is told mostly from the British point of view, but that is appropriate because the British planned the operation and took most of the casualties. The British 1st Airborne Division, commanded by Roy Urqhart (Sean Connery) was dropped 64 miles behind enemy lines, right on top of a Panzer division, and was nearly wiped out. Only 2,000 of the 10,000 men in the division made it back to allied lines.

This is a war movie in the grand tradition, made before moviemakers could cheat with digital effects. Thus, the massive air drops, for example, were real. (The same airdrop portrayed in the recent HBO series "Band of Brothers" relied on digital effects to paint in many of the parachutes in the background.)

Unfortunately, the film that this DVD was mastered from was in dreadful, really terrible condition. There are flecks and white spots galore, all throughout the picture. These white flecks can be digitally "repaired," but no one bothered to do that on this DVD. Consequently, this is just about the worst looking DVD I have ever seen. A movie this magnificent deserved a better DVD treatment, authored from a cleaned up, fully restored film. My grade of two stars is for the DVD only; the film is easily a five star film, especially for war movie and WWII movie buffs.

three stars for everyone else. If you're not a warmovie or WWII history buff, you're probably going to find "A Bridge Too Far" pretty heavy going. Based on actual events and people taken from Cornelius Ryan's masterful book of the same name- still one of the best books ever written about a WWII campaign, "A Bridge Too Far" details one of the most interesting operations of the entire war- an attempt to capture a series of bridges with paratroops which would link up a highway across the Rhine and into Germany ending the war by Christmas 1944. Unfortunately, the operation, codenamed Market-Garden, was a failure and almost doomed to such a fate from its inception.

A huge big-budget film about an Allied defeat probably could not have been made in any other decade than the 70's. The post Vietnam hangover and its anti-military fallout, especially of high command decisions, would seemingly allow a filmmaker to delve into a defeat such as Market-Garden which plays perfectly into a Vietnam-like story of military egos gone astray cooking up grandiose plans and ignoring anything that interferes with those plans including the risk to the lives of thousands of young soldiers. ABTF attempts to tackle this topic by making the real antagonists not the Germans, but British Field Marshall Montgomery, who is never seen, and British Lt. Gen Browing (Dirk Bogarde) who acts as the voice of Montgomery. Unfortunately, director Richard Attenborough was not up to the job to make this angle work. Maybe "A Bridge Too Far" was too much for one man. In contrast "The Longest Day," the film which ABTF mimics with its huge all-star cast and screenplay based on a Cornelius Ryan book, was directed by four different men. While "The Longest Day" was hailed by critics and audiences alike, ABTF received mixed reviews, and audiences in 1977 were more interested in seeing "Star Wars" than a movie which has garnered a reputation for ponderous boredom.

I loved this movie as a kid since there weren't too many color WWII movies with this kind of budget- the columns of armored vehicles, the mass paratroop drops, and some of the set piece battle scenes are fantastic to watch. I still find Grabner's attack across Arnhem bridge and Julian Cook's (Robert Redford)assault across the Waal River to be terrific filmmaking. However, ABTF contents itself to tell us more about stuff rather than show it such as the 82nd's attempt to take Nijmegem town and, although the film details John Frost's (Anthony Hopkins) battle on the bridge, the rest of British 1st Airborne's struggle is barely shown- the film reduces all the fighting around Oosterbeek to shells going off around division HQ. The result is a rather quiet war movie with lot's of generals talking, but sparse action.

In many ways ABTF is a triumph, but it's more of a triumph of logistics than of film. It tries very hard to touch the heart, with its story of sacrifice and heroism which might have been in vain, but it really never succeeds.

Huge film production about Operation Market Garden, the Allied invasion into the Netherlands during World War II. The film recreates the massive parachute assaults of the 1st (British), 82nd (American) and 101st (American) Airborne Infantry Divisions; each seizing critical bridges for the follow-on ground offensive by the United Kingdom's XXX Corps.

The parachute drop sequence of the lead British paratrooper battalion on the deepest objective, Arnhem, and hence the title of the movie, is breathtaking. The British paratroopers then desperately defend themselves in a series of exciting and brutal battles against German forces not detected by British Intelligence. Matters become severe as XXX Corps is delayed in its own battles while attempting link-up with the British paratroopers trapped in Arnhem.

The river-crossing attack by a battalion of American "82nd" paratroopers, under the command of Major Julian Cook, portrayed by Robert Redford, is stunning. Also memorable is James Caan as a Sergeant who rescues his dying commander, and later threatens an Army doctor with deadly force to save him. The all-star cast is great, though Ryan O'Neal could have put more 'gusto' into his performance as General James Gavin, the dynamic commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The scale of the picture is staggering and it's easy to see why this production went over-budget. It's visually impressive and provides a detailed history lesson on this WW II operation. While exciting to watch, A Bridge Too Far does requires a viewer's full attention to follow the complex storyline